Thoughts from a Part-Core Gamer

Stale Leftovers

I love the yearly events; I really do. My favorite is probably… well, I’m having a hard time putting my finger on just one of them. I like Midsummer Festival a lot; I like the dungeon boss, the fires, the theme of the whole thing. I like Winter’s Veil, too; I think it does a good job of providing an Azerothian version of a real-world holiday, though I wish there were more than just the Christian themes in it. Still I’ve enjoyed it a lot.

But more and more recently, the events are getting stale. When comparing WoW to more modern games like Guild Wars 2 or The Secret World, the constantly-repeated, not-very-updated events begin to really pale in comparison. In the earlier years, there were always new aspects each year, but in the past few years, not much has changed; they’ve given the same stale junk out with little to no changes in the event itself except, occasionally, the level of the bosses.

So the world events are starting to be a bit lackluster. I realize they’re developing these amazing new expansions, planning new continents and new timelines, envisioning new lore, but the little changes throughout the year helped glue together the larger content explosions in the same way that the emerging storylines in GW2 and TSW do the same.

I realize, of course, that just asking for more and more content isn’t really “fair.” They’ve got limited staff and resources, and putting those towards new expansions benefits the wider player base than just adding small new things to the world events. Still. They used to do it, and they’re a bigger company now, and they don’t. So I don’t really feel it’s out of the question for them to pick these small additions back up and add them in. They may argue that not a lot of people do the holiday world events, but part of the reason is because we’ve done them over and over and nothing’s changed in the past few years. If things started changing, I suspect a lot more players would be involved.

Of course, they can’t please everyone all the time. People complain about the Children’s Week (another of my favorites) battleground achievements. People complain about the bonfires being all over (and the candy buckets, too). Some people just can’t be pleased, but I’d be happy with more new options whether they involved the new battlegrounds, new pets, new costumes, or new – really – anything. The same-old same-old is starting to taste a bit like stale leftovers.

On other notes, my parents are visiting, which always leads to “lively” discussions, like my father saying, out of nowhere, about 10 times now (since Monday night) that “We’re not giving up our guns.” Keep in mind this is not in response to anything anyone has said, just a verbal provocation to try to start an argument. He’s just lovely, really.

I did show my mother Card Hunter, which I think she’ll like. I showed my father, a survival nut, DayZ, and we ran around Chenarus a bit looking for food and water. I played on a no PvP server to have an easier time showing him around, and while I explained what that meant, once I armed myself with a crowbar, he kept telling me to kill every survivor I saw and take his stuff. He’d fit in well in the EVE community, I think, if he could operate a computer game.

I’ll be taking of Friday, most likely, so if you’re in a place that’s about to celebrate a holiday, enjoy it! If not, enjoy your weekend!

Sincerely,

Stubborn (and thinking about hopping back into TSW because of Rowan’s many excellent posts about it)

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Full disclosure: TSW is my big game and I have played GW2 within the past couple weeks. Having gotten the achievements, I don’t if I would be focusing on the events in WoW even if I were still playing. So I don’t disagree with your core premise, but holding up two games that are only about a year old as having fresher holiday events is—I don’t know—unfair. A better companion would be if games of the same generation as WoW, like EQ2, have fresher holiday stuff going on. Of course, I have no idea if they do.

Looking back, I wasn’t clear about what I meant, but I meant to compare the overall dynamism of GW2 and TSW to WoW’s complete lack of dynamism and lack even of small content patches like they used to do. I agree that it’s “unfair,” but WoW’s the “big boy” in the field, so if it’s not keeping up with the new kids, then it needs to rethink some of its core principles. I’m not asking WoW to start having dynamic events like GW2 or TSW does, but at least a little change like they used to do at the holidays would be welcome.

Thanks for the comment, and if I do hop back onto TSW, are you available to be met up with? My “Stubborn” character is not TERRIBLY geared, after all, though she hasn’t killed the big golden guy yet (gatekeeper?).

You should introduce your father to trade chat, sounds like he’d fit right in. ;)

I’m with your original thought, I feel that one of Blizzard’s few major failings with WoW is that they don’t allow the current world to breathe, they focus too much attention on upcoming things and not enough on the game that we’re actually playing (and, notably, paying a subscription for) TODAY.

It’d be one thing if we paid per patch… then the current paradigm makes sense. Thing is, I and we all in this market pay monthly, not specifically for content. Frankly, I expect those in-game holiday events to be updated regularly (if you put one of your dad’s guns to my head I’d say I’d expect them to be updated, if not completely revamped, every single month/year!). I expect Stormwind to be slowly repaired, not just in major chunks (or not at all). I expect that other areas damaged by Deathwing will slowly improve. The “boom, wake up, fixed!” paradigm is beyond stale.

Does that take resources away from new content? Absolutely… but I feel that with a monthly subscription I’m paying for that level of attention. Whether content arrives monthly or quarterly or semi-annually I’m paying the same per month for a variable amount of content, seems to me the way for Blizzard to smooth over those deltas is to gives us a vibrant, living world to play in even if it isn’t the new shiny that everyone is flocking to. I notice and appreciate things like rare mob indicators on the minimap even in the “older” zones. I noticed that the Celestial bosses had scaling health almost a week ago even though they only hit the patch notes in the past day or two. Garrosh has died, I’d like to see them start the Vale cleanup now, not later (or never). Shouldn’t the Pandaren be working on a new Jade Statue by now? It’s been, what, a year now? Hell, I’d be willing to help out with a daily quest, something similar to the early quests available prior to ToC in Wrath, maybe find jade around the area and turn it in for a daily rep boost for the faction of your choice.

I was thinking this week that I’m incredibly disappointed by the progress made at the Darkmoon Faire… we got a carousel at some point that’s borderline useless and a new world boss, that’s it, over the course of years. Same damned daily quests, every single day, none added, none changed, none removed. They’ve tweaked the prizes a bit over time at least but that isn’t enough. That place is BEGGING for regular structual changes… yet, nothing.